Because even furry lobsters need their 15 minutes of fame

A new crustacean that looks like a lobster covered in silky, blond fur has been discovered in the South Pacific. The creature has been called the "Yeti crab." Scientists have labelled it with its own genus and species, Kiwa hirsute: "Kiwa" after the goddess of shellfish in native Polynesian culture and "hirsute" because it's hairy. The crustacean has a white shell and 10 legs. It measures about 15 centimetres from tip to toe, or about the size of a salad plate, said Michel Segonzac of the French Institute of Research for the Study and Exploitation of the Sea. The researcher co-authored a paper that describes the find in the most recent issue of Zoosystema, the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in France. The blind creature has pincers covered in hairy strands and has "the vestige of a membrane" instead of eyes, Segonzac told the Associated Press. A U.S.-French expedition in a submersible caught the creature at a depth of 2,300 metres in a hydrothermal vent about 1,500 kilometres south of Easter Island last year, the team reported. The crustacean is the newest member of Galatheoidea, a group of 10-legged animals that includes lobsters, crabs and prawns.

Posted by The Empty Calorie on Sunday, March 12, 2006 at 4:35 PM |Permalink

I'm not entirely sure if you can compare Kiwa hirsute to an antlered rabbit, which has allegedly been seen by people. I am fairly certain that a reputable scientist would not stake his or her career on the jackalope---but I could be wrong.

This is the source for the article on Kiwa hirsute. Please note that the abstract (also below) contains reference to molecucular data that quantitatively differentiates Kiwa hirsute from other crustaceans:

Abstract: A new monotypic family, Kiwaidae n. fam., is proposed for Kiwa hirsuta n. gen., n. sp., new genus and new species collected in hydrothermal vents of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge, south of Easter Island. The new family belongs to the superfamily Galatheoidea, having similarities with the family Chirostylidae, but with distinctive characters including carapace shape and ornamentation, insertion of fifth pereopod not visible and situated below sternal plastron, sternite between third maxillipeds large and strongly produced anteriorly; eyes strongly reduced, antennal scale absent and chelipeds and walking legs with dense mat of setae. Molecular data (18S rRNA) gene confirm the clear difference between anomuran families, placing the new taxa closer to the families Chirostylidae, Galatheidae and Porcellanidae than to Aeglidae.